“I’m not trying to be an ass,” Brock replied, while still tapping on his keyboard. “An electronic file, showed up in one of our databases today, that had no business being in our system. It was password encrypted. I was going to work on it when I finished here. The file was called “Leprechaun” oddly enough.”

“Weird,” Aiden said, as he sat back down and glanced over at us.

“Yeah, unless you know a little something about Mick. He was on the Notre Dame football team before he became the agent we all know and love.”

“Otherwise known as The Fighting Irish?” Holden asked.

“Correct. So, I’ve just plugged in his college student ID number, and a couple more tries here.”

“And?” Aiden prompted.

Brock smirked. “And we now have the details of something near and dear to his heart. Everything.”

“You mean…” Cade said beside me.

“Shh. Not a word. Brock, let’s take this offsite,” Aiden said.

Brock sat back in his chair with his eyes glued to the screen. “No worries, I’ve made sure this is a blacked-out building. He wasn’t lying. And if someone was trying to trick him, they can’t now. Don’t ask, you don’t want to know.”

“Friends in high places?”

Brock eyed Aiden. “You don’t want to know.”

“You owe him an apology. A big one. He’s five years younger than you, and you clocked him for doing his job.”

Brock shrugged.

“I mean it. I'll suspend you again, and make you retake the anger management program.”

“Fine. He’s really pretty ingenious. I’m impressed,” he said, and glanced up to five surprised faces. “What?”

“Forget it,” Aiden said. “Fill us in.”

Holden cleared his throat, before Brock could begin. Normally not an expressive man, unless he was around Julia, he seemed to be struggling to say something. “Maybe we should address the elephant in the room. Like, why the fuck we’re here in the first place. Cade, what the hell is this about?”

Everyone seemed to look at Cade at the same time. The palpable tension in the room, which had been there from the beginning, began to focus on one person, and more specifically, on one event.

Cade’s hand gave mine a squeeze, and I returned it. Then he started from the beginning, telling them everything that had happened, from the time they'd last seen him to the present.

As I watched their faces, I could tell they were shocked about what he’d done. Holden maybe more angry than surprised. But as the minutes wore on, they seemed to accept the events that had brought us to this room. If they were hesitant to forgive him outright, they didn’t show it. But I suspected that much like me, they would need some time to absorb their new reality.

Logan didn’t comment much, as the rest of the group asked questions. He had the look of a man that had been burdened by guilt and was trying to find forgiveness within himself for keeping Cade’s secret.

When Cade noticed it, he reached over grasped the man’s shoulder. It wasn’t verbalized, but it was clearly a gesture of thanks for what Logan had done for him.

“So, what now?” I asked when there were a few minutes of silence after their talk.

“You go with Holden and Jake.”

Jake, who had been sitting back and been mainly observing up to this point, pulled out his car keys. “Ready. We’ll get you to the compound first, then we have a safehouse set up for this sort of thing.”

I shook my head and stared at Cade. “No. I can’t leave you here. They said they were going to arrest you. Besides that, my mother can barely remember to eat lately. I can’t leave her.”

Cade sighed and touched my face. “And I can’t risk it, sunshine. We’ll move your mom too.”

I turned to Holden, the one person that was closest to Cade and asked, “You’re going to let him go to a federal prison over this? You can’t possibly want that.”

He was thoughtful for a moment before his eyes shifted to Cade. “No, I don’t. But I also understand wanting to protect your own.”

I threw my hands up. “All of you are fucking nuts. Great wives! But you should go home immediately and tell them that you don’t deserve them.”

Brock chuckled, then cleared his throat and looked away when I glared at him.

I heard a similar noise coming from Aiden’s direction.

Cade stood up and pulled at my arm enough that I was forced to stand up with him. I wanted to punch him again for being the stupid, sweet, noble man that he was. One that would go to jail if Mick had been telling us the truth, which I suspected he was.

“We’re going to head out for a while, so she can think clearly. Tomorrow, we’ll figure this shit out. Now that you have the case files, maybe you can help them before the guy targets someone else.”

I started tugging at his arm trying to loosen his grip. “There’s no thinking—”

“Yes, there is,” he said gruffly, as he tightened his grip.

I stared at Logan for some intervening help. Some rational thought. Anything. He just gave me a small smirk.

After giving the guys a brief goodbye, and telling them where he was staying, Cade hauled me to the car. The silent treatment was clearly not going to work with him. The radio had just gotten turned up to fill the vacuum of absent conversation, and we rode like that all the way to his hotel.

With a stern objection on my lips, but stubbornly refusing to be the first person to talk, I followed him to his room and went inside. It wasn’t much on décor. A bed, a small table, a desk, and TV were really the only significant things in the room. It smelled somewhat better than it looked with the fragrance of lemon cleaner in the air. It wasn’t depressing necessarily, but seeing the large man in front of me, moving around such a tiny impersonal environment, seemed like a tragedy. He deserved a home, not this box with a bed.

I sighed and did my thing in the bathroom before we traded places. I ended up sitting against the headboard with a pillow behind me. He took his time, and I heard the sink turn on and off several times. He was probably avoiding me or letting me cool off.

“You don’t have to go to jail,” I told him, as he came out of the bathroom. I was looking down at my hands but when he didn’t respond I glanced at him.

He was wearing a pair of cotton sweats that hung low on his hips and nothing else. He’d trimmed his beard in such a way that he looked a lot like a well-groomed businessman rather than a rough, bartender bad boy. I liked both, but at the moment I was more interested in his chest.

He turned toward the desk, giving me a quick wink but still didn’t respond. Running a hand through his hair he rifled through some papers on the desk, and I got a full view of the tattoos that covered his back. They were a mix of a lot of things, but mainly line art that spread from his shoulders down to his hips. The main centerpiece was an angry eagle that looked like it was trying to rip into his skin with its claws.

There was some scarring high on the right-hand side of his back. I knew that it was from being shot in Colorado but hadn’t really thought about what it might look like. With the tattoos covering most of his back, it seemed to blend in so well that had anyone else seen it, they might not have noticed it.

“Nice tats,” I said somewhat subdued.

He turned around and leaned up against the desk, crossing his arms over his chest. He had to have known what the effect was in that pose. Other than a scar that matched the precise position of the wound on his back, years of working out had sculpted muscles that stretched like hills and valleys over the smooth expanse of his skin. He appeared bigger without his shirt on, full of life and brimming with sex appeal.

“Thanks,” he said quietly, as he stared at me. “We need to talk.”

Talk? I glanced down at the edge of his waistband and wondered what kind of torture this was. It had to be some twisted joke if he thought I could concentrate.

“Uhm, okay,” I said after a minute and took a deep breath. “You should put a shirt on.”

He shook his head slowly and smirked. “No. You should take your shirt off.”

“I’m not sure how that would help at all.”

He moved toward the end of the bed, keeping his eyes on mine, and started crawling toward me. I tried to curl my legs against my chest, but as soon as I moved he grabbed my legs and tugged so hard that I went sliding underneath him.

His face was above me now, hovering just over my mouth. He teased me by going in for a kiss and leaning out every time I opened my mouth to let him.

“What are you doing?” I frowned up at him.

He moved my legs apart and settled between them, the hard bulge in his pants pressing into me. He turned his head to the side and started kissing my neck as my hands found his chest. He was so warm, his skin so utterly soft and his muscles incredibly hard.

“I’m trying to distract you from saying anything ridiculous,” he said as his lips continued to tease below my ear. “Your safety is not something I’m willing to fuck around with.”

My mouth opened when I felt his hand slide up my shirt. “So. So you’re using sex to convince me?”

He chuckled, and I felt it deep in his chest. “We’re just having a talk. If it ends up in sex, then we can talk some more afterward.”

My hips lifted into him when his fingers found my bra, roughly pulled it aside and started teasing my nipples.

“You play dirty,” I hissed.

He lifted and tugged my shirt over my head, then slid the band out of my hair before his lips found mine in a rough kiss. His tongue demanded entrance and I gave him what he wanted. I was rewarded with a deep groan from him.

My bra was unhooked, and he broke off our kiss to stare down at my chest for a moment.

“Fuck, pretty girl. I don’t know where to start with you.”

He took my nipple in his mouth, the coarse hairs on his beard rubbing against the softest parts of my skin. He sucked first one, then the other as he pressed his hips urgently into me.

As my eyes closed, savoring the feeling, I wasn’t sure what planet I was on, what year it was, or where I was at, with his tongue working small miracles on my overly neglected breasts. Sensations swarmed through me, need, want, hunger. My back arched as I let out a low moan.

His mouth left my breast and he blew over it, causing a lightning bolt to shoot through me.

“You’re going to leave Bakersville for the safehouse,” he whispered.

“No, no. Stop talking.”

He chuckled, and I felt the vibration all along my torso down to my legs. I still had too many clothes on and I wanted them off immediately.

“We have to talk, Suzie.”

“Need you first, then talk,” I whimpered as his palm slid over one already engorged breast.

He let out a low growl and lifted off me. “This didn’t go quite like I planned.”

My eyes flew open and I watched as he removed my shoes and pants. He stared at me long and hard in my cotton panties, spread out before him. He resembled a conqueror as his eyes burned a path up my body to my face.

“You’re gorgeous, Suzanne. Every part of you.”

My cheeks warmed for a moment under his gaze, and I reached up to the edge of his pants. Hooking a finger in, I pulled, but he moved my hand away.

The look in his eyes was so serious, so completely reverent that I nearly missed him dropping his pants to the floor. I caught the briefest glance of his cock and gasped as he bent to remove my now soaked panties.

The small glimpse that I got promised a sore day tomorrow. He was huge and incredibly hard. The girth alone was going to take some getting used to.

He crawled between my legs and settled again. The skin on my inner thigh encountered his crotch and I felt a burning warmth.

My hips tilted up as tingles ran through my stomach. He ran a hand over my thigh that gripped me from time to time as he licked up my side. Then he slowly licked down until I felt the warmth of his breath on my center.

Hooking both of his arms around my legs, he spread me until I couldn’t possibly be more exposed.

“Mine,” he growled, before his mouth descended and his tongue lay siege to my clit.

I cried out, I moaned. My hands were spread out on the bed, clutching the sheets in agony and pleasure. I was so close. When he sucked hard, nearly biting me, I screamed as my body nearly came off the bed and my legs fought his tight grip. Even then he didn’t stop and kept up the onslaught of his attentive tongue.

When I glanced down at him between my thick lashes, he stared up at me and gave me a wicked smile, then started sucking my clit again.

He was trying to kill me. My back arched off the bed as another orgasm violently tore through my body.

He shifted, then his mouth met mine, as his hand slid between us. When his fingers found my folds, and slipped so easily down into my wet opening, I nearly wept. How many times had I dreamed about this man, this moment?

His fingers found a soft rhythm as his mouth slid up to my neck and sucked hard. My hand on his shoulder gripped at the muscles as my other one slid down to his ass. He flexed as his fingers moved out of me and I felt the rippling effect in his muscles.

I was panting on the edge of an orgasm again, stomach cramped with a need when he finally moved his cock toward my entrance, pushing inside me.

“Sorry, baby, this is going to go fast. Are you on birth control?”

“Yeah,” I let out on a sigh as he pushed forward. The answer was apparently meaningless since he was already spreading me.

“That’s too bad,” he mumbled.

His hand went around my knee and pushed upward until my leg rested on his shoulder. I cried out as he slipped inside me and I began to adapt to his size. With time, I knew my body would mold to his, but he wasn’t slowing down tonight.

“A little bit more, baby,” he said as he kissed along the side of my face. “Fuck you’re beautiful.”

My arms went around his neck and my fingers laced through his hair. A soft keening sounded from somewhere and I realized I was in the middle of a long, moan.

He began to pull back, but I stopped and tugged his mouth down to mine. Our mouths collided, tongues met, then he slid roughly back into me, and I screamed. The muffled sound didn’t stop as he repeated the action.

He gripped my hip hard and held my body in place as he slammed into me.

When he bit my neck I nearly cried out as an electrifying bolt shot down my spine. It only heightened my pleasure as he sucked at me hard, teeth scraping the sensitive part under my ear.

“You like that?” he grunted on a thrust.

“Oh, Cade!” I moaned.

My leg on his shoulder slid off and his hand came up to play with my sensitive nipple. I tugged at his hair and he growled, intensifying his thrusts. He grabbed one of arms and pinned it to the bed in a hold that was almost too tight.

“Behave,” he commanded, then sucked on the bottom of my swollen lip. His hand gripped the back of my hair and pulled until my neck was completely exposed to him.

“You’re mine, baby,” he said in a husky voice against my ear. “Every fucking part of you. Say it.”

“Oh,” I moaned as he moved his hips in a circular motion. “Fuck. Yours!”

“Good girl. If I want your neck or those perfect tits of yours, I’ll have them. They’re mine to suck, to bite. Say it.”

I was delirious from his deep thrusts and could barely form a thought. When I didn’t give him an answer, his rough palm squeezed my sensitive breast and his fingers tweaked my nipple.

“Yours, Cade! Please!”

He growled and tightened his grip on my hair. “I want to see that perfect mouth of yours wrapped around my cock with my fist in your hair. But not today.”

The image that his words brought to mind made me moan. I wanted that too. A familiar burning began deep within my muscles, a pulsating that was converging where our bodies met.

“Cade,” I begged.

When he increased his speed, I came apart. My legs squeezed around him, my back came off the bed. Instead of pressing me down, Cade lifted me, spreading my legs further, giving him access so deep it was nearly painful as he continued to thrust into me.

He buried himself to the hilt, then jerked suddenly and shouted my name. Still thrusting several times, he laid me gently on the bed. My body felt like dead weight as I tried to lift my arm around his neck but couldn’t manage.

“Rest, baby. Sleep,” he said softly as he kissed my face. “God, you’re perfection, pretty girl. A gift I don’t deserve.”

I opened my mouth to reply, and he gave me a gentle kiss. Slipping out of me, he rolled me over on top of his chest and let out a huge sigh as his arms slid around me.

I wanted to ask what he meant. Wanted to tell him that he deserved more than the woman in his arms. But as my brain formed the sentiment, my weary body relaxed in his hold and took me down into sleep.